Review of Just Like Heaven (2005) by Markb. — 09 Oct 2005

Not every movie ever made has to reinvent the wheel, redefine cinema as we know it, or be Citizen Kane on a stick. (And let's be honest...each and every one of us would be physically as well as intellectually exhausted if they all did!) Sometimes you just want a movie that skillfully and pleasurably replows very well-trod ground; a Cellular, or a Mr.

3000...or a Just Like Heaven. Not that there wasn't any real reason going in for me to expect it to be something more along the lines of Just Like Purgatory at best: the poster tagline 'It's a Wonderful Afterlife' rips off the title of my all-time favorite film; the success rate of supernatural romcoms is about as low as Enron's 2005 gross earnings (for every Ghost there seems to be a dozen Chances Ares, Hearts and Souls or Heavenly Kids); and quite frankly, Reese Witherspoon had pretty much worn her cutesy-princess act down to the nub.

You've got to have a Babar-like memory to recall when Witherspoon was The Queen of Indie Edge; the final straw was broken last year when she torpedoed Mira Nair's Vanity Fair by playing Thackeray's unlikable, manipulative Becky Sharp as the great-grandmother of Legally Blonde's Elle Woods.

But Leslie Dixon's and Peter Tolan's solid comedy writing wisely gives Witherspoon some prickly, bristly qualities not seen since Election as a ghostly being visiting her old domicile and irritating its current resident, a bereaved, semi-alcoholic couch potato played by Mark Ruffalo, until they.

..well, you know. (Hey, I didn't say it was original; I just said it was enjoyable.) As in 13 Going On 30, Ruffalo is your go-to guy when you want to cast an endearingly ordinary, down-to-earth shlub--in other words, someone representing 90% of your male audience--as your romantic lead, and he and Witherspoon create a lot of very funny Oscar Madison/Felix Unger vibes in the early sequences.

If you wanted to make the claim that Mark Waters is the best commercial comedy director currently working in movies, I won't give you THAT much of an argument; he did possibly the best Disney comedy remake ever (Freaky Friday) and both the best SNL-vets-on-film film since, oh, let's say Tommy Boy, AND the best high school movie since the aforementioned Election with last year's Mean Girls.

Waters' handling of Heaven's two scenes involving Witherspoon's sister (Dina Waters, the director's wife, who presents a rare argument in favor of casting nepotism) rather dazzlingly blends all kinds of conflicting moods including slapstick, comic misunderstandings, cute-kid humor, life-or-death suspense and much more; at his best, the man's an alchemist.

But then, his expert pacing of every scene in Just Like Heaven makes it a surprisingly effective and entertaining blend of laughs, tears, drama and romance. Not that it's perfect or without flaws; the sexy neighbor subplot looks like outtakes from The 40-Year-Old Virgin that Judd Apatow wisely had removed, and the casting of Napoleon Dynamite himself, Jon Heder, as a psychic bookstore employee would've seemed slightly less opportunistic if Heder limited his use of the term "dude" to every sixth word rather than every fourth.

And some viewers will find the hospital-based climax a little too disturbingly close to a certain controversial event that dominated the news earlier this year; a few social liberals may even take offense at certain plot twists.

As someone who often fits into that political category myself, I can only give two responses to these folks: 1.) It's. Only. A. Movie.; and 2.) Consider it tit for tat for the conclusion of a certain actor-director's Oscar-winning film from last year that annoyed certain conservatives.

..and let's call it even.